Written with the needs of students in mind, exploring philosophy in its historical context and linking topics that are usually treated as unrelated units

One of the most important and controversial themes in the contemporary dialogue among scientists and Christian theologians is the issue of "divine action" in the world. This volume brings together contributions from leading scholars on this topic, which emerged out of the Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action project, co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and Natural Science. This multi-year collaboration involved over 50 authors meeting at five international conferences. The essays collected here demonstrate the pervasive role of philosophy in this dialogue. Contributors include: Ian Barbour, Philip Clayton, George F. R. Ellis, Nancey Murphy, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Robert John Russell, F. LeRon Shults, William Stoeger, Thomas F. Tracy and Wesley Wildman.

A collection of essays by experts in the field, exploring how nature works at every level to produce more complex and highly organized objects, systems, and organisms from much simpler components, and how our increasing understanding of this universal phenomenon of emergence can lead us to a deeper and richer appreciation of who we are as human beings and of our relationship to God. Several chapters introduce the key philosophical ideas about reductionism and emergence, while others explore the fascinating world of emergent phenomena in physics, biology, and the neurosciences. Finally there are contributions probing the meaning and significance of these findings for our general description of the world and ourselves in relation to God, from philosophy and theology. The collection as a whole will extend the mutual creative interaction among the sciences, philosophy, and theology.

If humans are purely physical, and if it is the brain that does the work formerly assigned to the mind or soul, then how can it fail to be the case that all of our thoughts and actions are determined by the laws of neurobiology? If this is the case, then free will, moral responsibility, and, indeed, reason itself would appear to be in jeopardy. Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown here defend a non-reductive version of physicalism whereby humans are (sometimes) the authors of their own thoughts and actions.
Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? brings together insights from both philosophy and the cognitive neurosciences to defeat neurobiological reductionism. One resource is a "post-Cartesian" account of mind as essentially embodied and constituted by action-feedback-evaluation-action loops in the environment, and "scaffolded" by cultural resources. Another is a non-mysterious account of downward (mental) causation explained in terms of a complex, higher-order system exercising constraints on lower-level causal processes. These resources are intrinsically related: the embeddedness of brain events in action-feedback loops is the key to their mentality, and those broader systems have causal effects on the brain itself.
With these resources Murphy and Brown take on two problems in philosophy of mind: a response to the charges that physicalists cannot account for the meaningfulness of language nor the causal efficacy of the mental qua mental. Solutions to these problems are a prerequisite to addressing the central problem of the book: how can biological organisms be free and morally responsible? The authors argue that the free-will problem is badly framed if it is put in terms ofneurobiological determinism; the real issue is neurobiological reductionism. If it is indeed possible to make sense of the notion of downward causation, then the relevant question is whether humans exert downward causation over some of their own parts and processes. If all organisms do this to some extent, what needs to be added to this animalian flexibility to constitute free and responsible action? The keys are sophisticated language and hierarchically ordered cognitive processes allowing (mature) humans to evaluate their own actions, motives, goals, and rational and moral principles.

How is free will possible in the light of the physical and chemical underpinnings of brain activity and recent neurobiological experiments? How can the emergence of complexity in hierarchical systems such as the brain, based at the lower levels in physical interactions, lead to something like genuine free will? The nature of our understanding of free will in the light of present-day neuroscience is becoming increasingly important because of remarkable discoveries on the topic being made by neuroscientists at the present time, on the one hand, and its crucial importance for the way we view ourselves as human beings, on the other. A key tool in understanding how free will may arise in this context is the idea of downward causation in complex systems, happening coterminously with bottom up causation, to form an integral whole. Top-down causation is usually neglected, and is therefore emphasized in the other part of the book 's title. The concept is explored in depth, as are the ethical and legal implications of our understanding of free will.

This book arises out of a workshop held in California in April of 2007, which was chaired by Dr. Christof Koch. It was unusual in terms of the breadth of people involved: they included physicists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, philosophers, and theologians. This enabled the meeting, and hence the resulting book, to attain a rather broader perspective on the issue than is often attained at academic symposia. The book includes contributions by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, George F. R. Ellis, Christopher D. Frith, Mark Hallett, David Hodgson, Owen D. Jones, Alicia Juarrero, J. A. Scott Kelso, Christof Koch, Hans K ng, Hakwan C. Lau, Dean Mobbs, Nancey Murphy, William Newsome, Timothy O Connor, Sean A.. Spence, and Evan Thompson.

Are humans composed of a body and a nonmaterial mind or soul, or are we purely physical beings? Opinion is sharply divided over this issue. In this clear and concise book, Nancey Murphy argues for a physicalist account, but one that does not diminish traditional views of humans as rational, moral, and capable of relating to God. This position is motivated not only by developments in science and philosophy, but also by biblical studies and Christian theology. The reader is invited to appreciate the ways in which organisms are more than the sum of their parts. That higher human capacities such as morality, free will, and religious awareness emerge from our neurobiological complexity and develop through our relation to others, to our cultural inheritance, and, most importantly, to God. Murphy addresses the questions of human uniqueness, religious experience, and personal identity before and after bodily resurrection.

The term postmodern is generally used to refer to current work in philosophy, literary criticism, and feminist thought inspired by Continental thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida. In this book, Nancey Murphy appropriates the term to describe emerging patterns in Anglo-American thought and to indicate their radical break from th

Humans are unique in their ability to reflect on themselves. Recently a number of scholars have pointed out that human self-conceptions have a history. Ideas of human nature in the West have always been shaped by the interplay of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. The fast pace of developments in the latter two spheres (neuroscience, genetics, artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering) call for fresh reflections on what it means, now, to be human, and for theological and ethical judgments on how we might shape our own destiny in the future. The leading scholars in this book offer fresh contributions to the lively quest for an account of ourselves that does justice to current developments in theology, science, technology, and philosophy.

American Protestant Christianity is often described as a two-party system divided into liberals and conservatives. This book clarifies differences between the intellectual positions of these two groups by advancing the thesis that the philosophy of the modern period is largely responsible for the polarity of Protestant Christian thought. A second thesis is that the modern philosophical positions driving the division between liberals and conservatives have themselves been called into question. It therefore becomes opportune to ask how theology ought to be done in a postmodern era, and to envision a rapprochement between theologians of the left and right. A concluding chapter speculates specifically on the era now dawning and the likelihood that the compulsion to separate the spectrum into two distinct camps will be precluded by the coexistence of a wide range of theological positions from left to right. Nancey C. Murphy is Associate Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, and the author of Reasoning and Rhetoric in Religion, also published by Trinity Press. Her book Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning earned the American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence.

Humans are unique in their ability to reflect on themselves. Recently a number of scholars have pointed out that human self-conceptions have a history. Ideas of human nature in the West have always been shaped by the interplay of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. The fast pace of developments in the latter two spheres (neuroscience, genetics, artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering) call for fresh reflections on what it means, now, to be human, and for theological and ethical judgments on how we might shape our own destiny in the future. The leading scholars in this book offer fresh contributions to the lively quest for an account of ourselves that does justice to current developments in theology, science, technology, and philosophy.

Are humans composed of a body and a nonmaterial mind or soul, or are we purely physical beings? Opinion is sharply divided over this issue. In this clear and concise book, Nancey Murphy argues for a physicalist account, but one that does not diminish traditional views of humans as rational, moral, and capable of relating to God. This position is motivated not only by developments in science and philosophy, but also by biblical studies and Christian theology. The reader is invited to appreciate the ways in which organisms are more than the sum of their parts. That higher human capacities such as morality, free will, and religious awareness emerge from our neurobiological complexity and develop through our relation to others, to our cultural inheritance, and, most importantly, to God. Murphy addresses the questions of human uniqueness, religious experience, and personal identity before and after bodily resurrection.

How is free will possible in the light of the physical and chemical underpinnings of brain activity and recent neurobiological experiments? How can the emergence of complexity in hierarchical systems such as the brain, based at the lower levels in physical interactions, lead to something like genuine free will? The nature of our understanding of free will in the light of present-day neuroscience is becoming increasingly important because of remarkable discoveries on the topic being made by neuroscientists at the present time, on the one hand, and its crucial importance for the way we view ourselves as human beings, on the other. A key tool in understanding how free will may arise in this context is the idea of downward causation in complex systems, happening coterminously with bottom up causation, to form an integral whole. Top-down causation is usually neglected, and is therefore emphasized in the other part of the book's title. The concept is explored in depth, as are the ethical and legal implications of our understanding of free will. This book arises out of a workshop held in California in April of 2007, which was chaired by Dr. Christof Koch. It was unusual in terms of the breadth of people involved: they included physicists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, philosophers, and theologians. This enabled the meeting, and hence the resulting book, to attain a rather broader perspective on the issue than is often attained at academic symposia. The book includes contributions by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, George F. R. Ellis , Christopher D. Frith, Mark Hallett, David Hodgson, Owen D. Jones, Alicia Juarrero, J. A. Scott Kelso, Christof Koch, Hans Kung, Hakwan C. Lau, Dean Mobbs, Nancey Murphy, William Newsome, Timothy O'Connor, Sean A.. Spence, and Evan Thompson.

If humans are purely physical, and if it is the brain that does the work formerly assigned to the mind or soul, then how can it fail to be the case that all of our thoughts and actions are determined by the laws of neurobiology? If this is the case, then free will, moral responsibility, and, indeed, reason itself would appear to be in jeopardy. Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown here defend a non-reductive version of physicalism whereby humans are (sometimes) the authors of their own thoughts and actions.
Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? brings together insights from both philosophy and the cognitive neurosciences to defeat neurobiological reductionism. One resource is a "post-Cartesian" account of mind as essentially embodied and constituted by action-feedback-evaluation-action loops in the environment, and "scaffolded" by cultural resources. Another is a non-mysterious account of downward (mental) causation explained in terms of a complex, higher-order system exercising constraints on lower-level causal processes. These resources are intrinsically related: the embeddedness of brain events in action-feedback loops is the key to their mentality, and those broader systems have causal effects on the brain itself.
With these resources Murphy and Brown take on two problems in philosophy of mind: a response to the charges that physicalists cannot account for the meaningfulness of language nor the causal efficacy of the mental qua mental. Solutions to these problems are a prerequisite to addressing the central problem of the book: how can biological organisms be free and morally responsible? The authors argue that the free-will problem is badly framed if it is put in terms of neurobiological determinism; the real issue is neurobiological reductionism. If it is indeed possible to make sense of the notion of downward causation, then the relevant question is whether humans exert downward causation over some of their own parts and processes. If all organisms do this to some extent, what needs to be added to this animalian flexibility to constitute free and responsible action? The keys are sophisticated language and hierarchically ordered cognitive processes allowing (mature) humans to evaluate their own actions, motives, goals, and rational and moral principles.

The term "postmodern" is generally used to refer to current work in philosophy, literary criticism, and feminist thought inspired by Continental thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Derrida. In this book, Nancey Murphy appropriates the term to describe emerging patterns in Anglo-American thought and to indicate their radical break from the thought patterns of Enlightened modernity.The book examines the shift from modern to postmodern in three areas: epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaphysics. Murphy contends that whole clusters of terms in each of these disciplines have taken on new uses in the past fifty years and that these changes have radical consequences for all areas of academia, especially in philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and ethics.

This collection of twenty-one essays explores the creative interaction among the cognitive neurosciences, philosophy, and theology. It is the result of the fourth of five international research conferences co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory, Rome, and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Berkeley. The overarching goal of these conferences is to support the engagement of constructive theology with the natural sciences and to investigate the philosophical and theological elements in ongoing theoretical research in the natural sciences.This series of conferences builds on the initial Vatican Observatory conference and its resulting publication, Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding (1988), and on previous jointly-sponsored conferences and their publications: Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature (1993), Chaos and Complexity (1995); and Molecular and Evolutionary Biology (1998). A future conference will focus on quantum physics and quantum field theory.In Section One, essays on biblical accounts of human nature (Joel B. Green) and on the role of philosophical theories of human nature in recent theology (Fergus Kerr) are paired with "snapshots" of neuroscientific research (Joseph E. LeDoux, Peter Hagoort, Marc Jeannerod, and Leslie A. Brothers) to set the poles between which the volume's dialogue proceeds. In Section Two, essays of two types bridge the fields of cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind: the first begin with findings in science that raise philosophical issues (Michael A. Arbib, LeDoux, Jeannerod); the second type address current philosophical accounts of human nature, focusing especially on reductionism (William R. Stoeger, Nancey Murphy, Theo C. Meyering). Essays in Section Three proceed from neuroscientific or philosophical accounts of human nature to theological interpretations: three essays provide comprehensive accounts of human nature consistent with both theology and science (Philip Clayton, Arthur Peacocke, Ian G. Barbour); others relate findings and general trends in neuroscience to phenomenological and Thomistic accounts of human experience (Stephen Happel), to Christian teaching on life after death (Ted Peters), and to religious experience (Fraser Watts, Wesley J. Wildman, and Leslie Brothers). Section Four offers conflicting answers to the question whether or not a theistic account is needed to make sense of the various dimensions of human nature canvassed in this volume.

The essays in Physics and Cosmology: Scientific Perspectives on the Problem of Natural Evil resulted from the seventh international research conference co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory Foundation and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. It is the first in a new series on the problem of natural evil-on reconciling suffering caused by natural processes with God's goodness. The editors have divided this volume into four sections. The first includes history of the issue and a critical analysis of how the history has often been understood, followed by two chapters that provide typologies: one of types of suffering, the other of the various "shapes" of defenses. The second section comprises chapters that address the problem of suffering head-on, with resources from science, theology, and philosophy. The third section contains essays that address the issue by offering reformulations of typical understandings of the relation between God and the world. Finally, essays in the fourth section claim, in one way or another, that the question of the volume needs to be reframed. Contributors: Niels Christian Hvidt, Terrence W. Tilley, Wesley J. Wildman, Christopher Southgate, Andrew Robinson, William R. Stoeger, S.J., Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, Thomas F. Tracy, Philip Clayton, Steven Knapp, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, Denis Edwards, Brad J. Kallenberg, and Don Howard.

"Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action: Twenty Years of Challenge and Progress"is a collection of thirteen essays assessing the scholarly contributions to the "Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action" series, which is comprised of five volumes resulting from international research conferences co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences between 1991 and 2000. The overarching goal of the series is to advance the engagement of constructive theology with the natural sciences with special attention to the theme of divine action and to investigate the philosophical and theological elements within science.This volume is divided into three sections: In Section One, contributors review the history of the series and the development of new research methodology and discuss philosophical issues raised by the laws of nature and the limits of science; in Section Two, authors provide philosophical analysis of specific issues in the series; and in Section Three, contributors offer theological analyses of specific issues. The five volumes in the series include: "Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature" (vol. 1, 1993); "Chaos and Complexity" (vol. 2, 1995); "Molecular and Evolutionary Biology" (vol. 3, 1998); "Neuroscience and the Person" (vol. 4, 1999); and "Quantum Mechanics "(vol. 5, 2001), and are distributed by University of Notre Dame Press.

Contributors to Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition use Alasdair MacIntyre’s work as a methodological guide for doing ethics in the Christian tradition. These essays are grouped in three sections: descriptions of MacIntyre’s approach to ethics as developed in After Virtue, reflections on the moral issues that come to the fore when viewing the Christian tradition from a MacIntyrean perspective, and selected essays on family, homosexuality, abortion, pacifism, feminism, business ethics, medical ethics, and economic justice.

Ethics, the first volume of McClendon's Systematic Theology. explored the shape of life in the Christian community. Doctrine, the second volume. investigated the teaching necessary to sustain that life. Witness. the third and final volume of the work. considers the wider context in which that life takes place. It asserts that the church's identity is established not only by how it lives and what it teaches but also by how it enters into conversation and connects with systems of thought and social structures outside itself. McClendon continues here his exploration of "the baptist vision". a tradition of the church's understanding of itself. its relation to Scripture. and its place in the larger society. which flows from the Radical Reformation of the 16th century. He employs that vision to engage in conversation with three principal partners: other theologies: current philosophy: and culture. including science and letters. the fine and performing arts. and politics -- in short. what Scripture calls "the world".

Winner of Prize for Outstanding Book in Theology and the Natural Sciences As science crafts increasingly detailed accounts of human nature, what has become of the soul? This collaborative project strives for greater consonance between contemporary science and Christian faith. Outstanding scholars in biology, genetics, neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy, theology, biblical studies, and ethics join here to offer contemporary accounts of human nature consistent with Christian teaching. Their central theme is a nondualistic account of the human person that does not consider the "soul" an entity separable from the body; scientific statements about the physical nature of human beings are about exactly the same entity as are theological statements concerning the spiritual nature of human beings. For all those interested in fundamental questions of human identity posed by the present context, this volume will provide a fascinating and authoritative resource.

This collection of fifteen research papers explores the implications of chaos and complexity in physical, chemical, and biological systems for philosophical and theological issues regarding God's action in the world. It resulted from the second of five international research conferences being co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory, Rome, and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Berkeley. The overarching goal is to contribute to constructive theology as it engages current research in the natural sciences and to investigate the philosophical and theological elements in ongoing theoretical research in the natural sciences.

In this timely and provocative book, Nancey Murphy sets out to dispel skepticism regarding Christian belief. She argues for the rationality of Christian belief by showing that theological reasoning is similar to scientific reasoning as described by contemporary philosophy of science. Murphy draws on new historicist accounts of science, particularly that of lmre Lakatos. According to Lakatos, scientists work within a "research program" consisting of a fixed core theory and a series of changing auxiliary hypotheses that allow for prediction and explanation of novel facts: Murphy argues that strikingly similar patterns of reasoning can be used to justify theological assertions. She provides an original characterization of theological data and explores the consequences for theology and philosophy of religion of adopting such an approach.

What is the ethical import of contemporary scientific cosmology? How does our understanding of the universe relate to our most pressing social concerns? How do the disparate fields of theology, ethics, and the sciences relate to each other? Murphy and Ellis offer a coherent construction of these relations and show how a particular moral vision-a "kenotic" ethic-is supported "from below" by the social sciences and "from above" by theology. The theological import of contemporary cosmology, they argue, points ultimately to an ethic that centers on self-sacrifice and nonviolence. In ambition, rigor, and scale, in its search for an integrated and coherent worldview at a time of unprecedented complexity and uncertainty, readers will find this volume daring and important.

This collection of research papers explores the implications of quantum cosmology and the status of the laws of nature for theological and philosophical issues regarding God's action in the world. The main goal is to contribute to constructive theology as it engages current research in the natural sciences, and to investigate the philosophical and theological elements in ongoing theoretical research in the natural sciences.